Attorney Richard Bernstein of 1-800-CALL-SAM fame to run New York Marathon year after bike path accident

NEW YORK -- Richard Bernstein, a blind-since-birth attorney and marathoner who sued New York and called out Mayor Michael Bloomberg after a bike-path accident in New York's Central Park in August 2012, is dedicated to defying odds.

Bernstein was absent Thursday from his Farmington Hills offices where he works with siblings and his father at the regionally famous Sam Bernstein Law Firm, 1-800-CALL-SAM.

The blind 39-year-old was instead in New York City getting ready for Sunday's New York Marathon.

A bike-path collision in Central Park on Aug. 15, 2012 thwarted Bernstein's last attempt at the 26.2-mile race in the nation's biggest city. This time he will prevail.

"I am going to get through this no matter what," he aid rom New York Thursday. "It's going to take a long time.

"I don't care if it's Tuesday morning... and they're cleaning the streets and I'm still out there."

While visiting the Big Apple to prepare for the 2012 marathon, Bernstein took a stroll at Central Park.

While crossing a path, a bicyclist slammed into the attorney and "shattered" the left side of his body, breaking his femur and pelvis, Bernstein said eight months after the incident.

The injuries Bernstein suffered will affect him for the rest of his life, he says, and jokes that now when he's asked what his disability is, he can say, "everything."

He calls himself a 39-year-old trapped in an 80-year-old's body.

He'll no longer raced to beat his own time, but instead to prove that he has overcome another challenge in his life.

"As a blind person, guess what you have to learn how to do things differently," Bernstein said. "And basically that's what this is... it's representing that I'm going to live a different kind of life."

In April, Bernstein said his training was limited to swimming, but he intended to enter the New York Marathon no matter how much pain he had to endure.

He spent months in the hospital and is still undergoing rehabilitation. The crash prompted Bernstein to sue New York. He's asking for crossing guards at bike path intersections and enforcement of bicycle speed limits.